Animation being good counts for nothing; I've seen regular series with animation superior to Phantasia. Direction was lacking. Story and pacing were non-existant. I'd go so far as to say that Symphonia's was better despite having inferior animation quality.

The only Tales anime that did it right was Eternia. It had decent animation and a story that wasn't a reimagining of the game, but presented itself as a side story so that it supplemented the game instead of trying to retell it. Even Star Ocean EX couldn't do the game's story justice and it was 26 episodes long.